Bard envisions the liberal arts institution as the hub of a network, rather than a single, self-contained campus. Numerous institutes for special study are available on and off campus, connecting Bard students to the greater community.

The Center for Civic Engagement at Bard College embodies the fundamental belief that education and civil society are inextricably linked. In an age of information overload, it is more important than ever that citizens be educated and trained to think critically and be actively engaged with issues affecting public life.

11-09-2016: John Crowley, the World Fantasy Award–winning author of Little, Big and the Ægypt series, will read from his fiction at Bard College on Monday, November 14. The New York Times Book Review writes, “John Crowley is an abundantly gifted writer, a scholar whose passion for history is matched by his ability to write a graceful sentence.”http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2853

11-04-2016: Economist Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, president of the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College and executive vice president and Jerome Levy Professor of Economics at Bard College, has been appointed as Greece’s minister of economy and development. As an economist, Papadimitriou has focused on financial structure reform, fiscal and monetary policy, community development banking, employment policy, and the distribution of income, wealth, and well-being. He heads the Levy Institute's macroeconomic modeling team studying and simulating the U.S. and world economies, including extensive research and modeling of the Greek economy. Papadimitriou has been president of the Levy Institute since 1986 and executive vice president, provost, and economics professor at Bard since 1977.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2852

10-18-2016: The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College will host its ninth annual international conference from Thursday, October 20 to Friday, October 21 in Olin Hall, on Bard’s Annandale-on-Hudson campus. The two-day conference, “REAL TALK: Difficult Questions about Race, Sex, and Religion,” asks: How can college be a safe and inclusive space for asking hard and uncomfortable questions essential to our democracy?http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2825

10-07-2016: Artists Medrie MacPhee, Sherri Burt Hennessey Artist in Residence, and Shinique Smith, who will teach a course at Bard this spring, have been honored with Anonymous Was A Woman Awards. Anonymous Was A Woman is an unrestricted grant of $25,000 that enables women artists, over 40 years of age and at a significant juncture in their lives or careers, to continue to grow and pursue their work. The award is given in recognition of an artist's accomplishments, artistic growth, and the quality of her work.http://www.anonymouswasawoman.org/2016-award-winners.html

10-04-2016: Dinaw Mengestu, professor of written arts and director of the Written Arts Program, has been named to the board of trustees of PEN America. The organization, which works at the intersection of literature and human rights, sought to broaden its leadership and address new challenges to expression with five new appointments to its board. Professor Mengestu is an award-winning Ethiopian-American author of three novels, most recently All Our Names. He joined the Bard faculty this fall.https://pen.org/press-release/2016-new-trustees

Faculty Profiles

Mona Simpson

Writer in Residence Mona Simpson is a former senior editor at the Paris Review and the author of five novels. Simpson has been awarded a Whiting Prize (1986), a Guggenheim (1988), a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Hodder Fellowship (1987), a Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Prize (1995), a Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize (2001). She is a Pen Faulkner finalist (2001) and most recently received a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2008).